Welcome to Show #260, and the start of Season 7 of the Babylon Podcast!

Get ready, Babylon 5 fans… the coverage of the comics, novels, guidebooks, games and collectibles is about to commence. But first, we have to find a way to get copies of some of them into Tim’s, Bret’s and Jeremy’s hands… after we digress into a discussion about physical vs digital books.

Deep Geeking: Tim, Summer, Bret and Jeremy discuss the last officially produced Babylon 5 video content, The Lost Tales.

We talk about how the stories have aged in the nearly 5 years since the DVD was released and how they impact us during fresh viewings now, and we also discuss what would have been the third segment on the DVD, a Mars-based story featuring Garibaldi (the script for this story can be found in the TV Movies scriptbook).

Also, folks preparing to review and discuss the comics and novels with us (or for us), get ready… your turn to join us for discussions is coming up soon!

Submitting your own Feedback: If you have any suggestions or comments, please let us know! Call, or just email us a comment you’ve recorded yourself!

Lurker’s Guide 2.0: Summer is expanding the documentation to be covered at Lurker’s Guide 2.0, the major change being converting the episode guide into a full Wiki with cross-referenced topics, tidbits and everything you’d want in a Wiki. She’s also still searching for pictures of rare collectibles, photos of magazine covers and toys, and all sorts of other B5 goodies that didn’t get included in the original guide during the years after Crusade. Let her know if you want to lend a hand.

More Parody/Filk Songs Wanted: If you know of any more B5-related fan songs out there, definitely let us know, so we can let other B5 fans know where to buy them! And if those CDs are out of print, let’s brainstorm on ways to get those songs back out there for fans!

Good episode folks! Tim: FYI, only the Catholics have exorcists. Its an exclusively Catholic thing and its practice is one of the things that the Protestants complained about when they split…they considered it magic and demonology.

The brief cg in Lost Tails only hints at how awesome a remastered B5 series could be.

I appreciate both stories but the clear favorite is John Sheridans.
Not mentioned in the podcast was Teryl Rothery (ISN reporter Ms. Chambers),
She was a good foil for Sheridan in an important scene to the story.

I think the Lochley story should have been scrapped for Garibaldi, yet you needed to have B5 there from the start. If anything they should have combined the two and made it a Martian they find on Mars who claims to be a demon or just scrap the whole demon thing for a Martian running wild on B5. Sheridan’s story was by far the best B5 story in a long time. I also agree, they needed more original cast members to make it feel like B5.

Knowing what we know now, I think a story showing Lochley being bombarded from all sides by requests because of the ceremony — running down the list of who’s coming, who’s turned down invites, replying to a handful of seemingly crazy diplomatic special requests, etc — would have been a better way to tie the Sheridan and Garibaldi stories together, anchoring them to B5.

It would have taken maybe 7-10 minutes for such an open, and combined with the ending we already saw, welcoming Sheridan and Vintari, plus maybe an offhand remark about Garibaldi not coming as they walk off towards the main area of the station, would have been a nice bookend appearance.

I honestly don’t think we’d realized how long we’d talked until the end, when Jeremy said “Man, this is went a little long”… Hee, we went over 30 minutes longer than we’ve gone in ages!

Just wanted to say I loved the choice of Stewart Copeland’s ‘Gathering’ theme for this year. Franke may have been the better choice for the series, but whenever I hear this version, it really takes me back to 1993 when B5 was brand new and I had no idea of the ride I was about to embark on.

Thanks! I was wondering if people would recognize it, given that the version of “The Gathering” with his score was never available on home video in the US (yes, it was on the Japanese import laserdisc).

I’m not sure if the version on iTunes has the original music, but for a while, the versions that were available on Hulu and at TheWB.com had it.

I look at it as coming full circle… the theme music from the episode that started everything for us is now being used in our final season talking about the show that changed everything for us.

Oh, forgot to mention in my earlier post that the description of the Garibaldi story really reminded me of ‘The Martian Chronicles’ – Martians posing as humans, Martians as the dying elder race leaving Mars to the new kids in town, etc. Shame we didn’t get to see it.

Gee, it’s only 5 years after this podcast aired. I’ve listened to most of them, but held off on a few because I had not yet seen the episode. And I’ve only read a couple of the books so far, so I may have missed some of those eps too.

But I finally just found/watched The Lost Tales. I really loved it. In some ways, I’m glad I didn’t watch the show when it first aired. It would’ve been too sad to have it end in real time.

Thanks again for this wonderful podcast. I loved it and miss it so much. I don’t think I even listened to the final episode yet. Too painful!